In the most recent issue of EGM, they had a small little article about Final Fantasy XIII. It reads as follows:

Stand down, Fantasy fanatics -- we probably won't learn anything new about FFXIII (the first chapter in Square Enix's multigame Fabula Nova Crystallis project) until the Tokyo Game Show at the end of September. And the bummers don't stop there. At a recent shareholders' meeting, Square Enix President Yoichi Wada made some more startling comments about next-gen development, promising more episodic online content, increased in-game advertising, and regular "software updates." Frankly, Wada's planned "updates" sound more like bug-fixing patches than cool bonus content. He explained that Square Enix could save on the huge cost of debugging by passing the bugs on to consumers and fixing problems after the fact. Yikes!

I don't mind the episodic content so much. It's the MMORPG released as a mainline, sequential Final Fantasy that bothers me. That's almost as rediculous as releasing an mainline, sequential toy as a convention exclusive. Wait...

Mines been dwindling since FFIX was announced. Let me go check.........yep, lost all hope for me liking a new FInal Fantasy game.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry but Tetsuya Nomura is the worse then to happen to Square Enix since they decided to name their franchise Final Fantasy. All that's come from that man is a slew of mediocre sequels of his one supposedly holy titles. There's a reason why all the good people left Square, like Amano, and went to make Mistwalker. Just for the record, Final Fantasy 9 is more of Final Fantasy game than Final Fantasy 7 will ever be; in my humble opinion it's just another RPG with the name Final Fantasy slapped on it to milk the franchise much like Sword of Mana/Seiken Densetsu.

square used to rarely do anything that people wanted them to do. They wouldn't really listen to fan ideas and still delivered amazing new content. Then they started making all that FF7 stuff cuz everyone wanted more from it. I think thats where it went all downhill. Final Fantasy just isn't as cool as it used be. Even with 12 coming out i'm not even excited about it anymore.

The last FF game that I really put alot of time into was FF9 because like others said,it had more of a FF feel to it. I have to admit that I really liked FFXI but I just dont have that much time to waste on a game.

I think the series has been getting too far away from its roots but atleast we can always play that remake they're doing for the DS. And besides,I'd much rather play some of the other big RPG series (Grandia,Tales of...,Star Ocean)anyways.

Final Fantasy is such an antiquated ideal nowadays that I'm actually surprised people still clamour over the latest releases. I mean, it's almost like the John Madden series of games. Every ten or so years there's a massive jump in quality/innovation (all opinion), but between it's just the same damn thing with different protagonists. Just like Street Fighter, just let it die with whatever shreds of dignity it has left.

There's a reason why all the good people left Square, like Amano, and went to make Mistwalker.

Click to expand...

Yoshitaka Amano was never part of Square to begin with. His work was contracted on a per-job basis. Even if he were an employee at Square, I wouldn't rank him among the most important people there anyway. All he really did was draw pictures that were mostly not used of characters which were promptly redesigned after he finished them. The traditional look and feel of Final Fantasy has nothing in common with Amano's style except for the Japanese cover art.

I really don't care. FFXIII sounds like it'll be a PS3 exclusive, and I'm not shelling out $600 for a console. Besides, most of my love for the Final Fantasy series died in the, what five years? since the last proper game came out. Had they actually made XI a real game instead of a dumb MMO (that I have lost two online friends to), I might still be really into the franchise, but now it just seems like part of the past to me (even though I've been replaying FFX lately).

I still intend to get XII, but it's not something I'm really, really excited about (all that excitement is going to the Valkyrie Profile sequel that comes out next month ).

Yoshitaka Amano was never part of Square to begin with. His work was contracted on a per-job basis. Even if he were an employee at Square, I wouldn't rank him among the most important people there anyway. All he really did was draw pictures that were mostly not used of characters which were promptly redesigned after he finished them. The traditional look and feel of Final Fantasy has nothing in common with Amano's style except for the Japanese cover art.

Click to expand...

He was only a freelancer when he came on for Final Fantasy 1 when he was introduced to the fledling art department of Squaresoft. With the success of Final Fantasy, he was brought on a conceptual artist and character designer. Amano had a much more important role that just a guy that draws pretty pictures.

I've played every FF game since they released the first one on the NES. Of all of them... my favorite game is still FFIV (II for those who only played it on the SNES). None of the recent games, except FFIX, even came close to the originals in terms of playability and sheer story. Sure, FFVII and all it's preceding games were pretty, but I think they lost something from the original games. I'm just happy that we're finally getting the real FFIII on the DS soon. I'll pick up XII simply because I want to have played them all, but if FFXIII ends up being a PS3 exclusive than my playing of this slowly dwindling title will end there. Although, despite my lack of interest in the next gen counsel games, I am looking forward to all the FFVII tie ins. Dirge of Cerberus might be a nice play... that, and despite my distaste, FFVII was... tolerable.